I’ve managed to stress the tendon of my left index,
overuse, really dumb move on my part.
So I’m trying to get a C natural thumbhole on my
whistles, cause this drastically reduces the use
of the wounded finger.
I’ve sent some whistles to makers who kindly are willing to
do this. But I have some whistles where the maker isn;t
availabe.
Most notably a Glenn Schultz untunable PVC D whistle,
quite a wonderful whistle, that I bought for 50 bucks.
Also I have a good Gen Bb. And so on.
Questions (I appreciate this is a long shot…)
Is there some way to estimate where the hole goes
and its size so that the thumb hole will be in tune?
How does one actually do the drilling?
Note that there are different materials involved,
as in PVC, brass tubing.
Is this something we can do ourselves?
I have, by the way, a Burke narrow bore aluminum D with a thumb hole,
Doc Jones sent it to me a few months ago. Hence the idea.
i s’pose you could put a hole half the size of the “B” hole directly opposite the “B” hole. that would produce the same effect as half holing for a c nat… something similar to this is done with quenas (south american diatonic end blown flutes.)
(caveats: 1) i am no expert… 2) i am not related to any experts… 3) i don’t know any experts. But it works for me when i make quenas.)
I think Paul Busman has mentioned that he will work on Glen Schultz whistles.
The general formula for adding a thumb hole is half way between the top, and second hole on the back side the same size as the top hole.
Generation tubes are metric so metric drills or numbered drills will be needed. If you have neither than drill under size and file the rest. The Generation Bb top hole needs a number 3 drill. The drill needs to sharp.
It is easy enough to drill cpvc but drilling thin brass takes more attention. If you don’t have a mill a drill press can be used, and the tube must be clamped down. If it moves when drilling it will make a mess. The bearings in a drill press are loose compared to a mill or lathe. So when trying to drill an exact hole in a thin wall brass tube a regular length drill may wander a little off center. This can be lessened by shorting the drill. Brass tubes in a drill press also need to be step drilled (small hole then larger to size.) Because a tube is round feeding the drill down into the brass must be slow or when the cutting edge of the drill comes round to the up side of the tube it could hang into the brass and rip it making a jagged hole. If Generation won’t make thumb holes for you, send it to me. I can help.
I must add–I sent off an Abell set (D/C) to Chris A on Mon to get
thumbholes. These just arrived back (!), lovely work as always,
free, including return postage. There’s a sticker on the box:
I think the Abell D should have dimensions pretty similar to the Schultz. Put the thumb hole in the relative same place relative to the A and B holes. Start a tad undersized and then enlarge gradually with a round file, sharp knife etc. You can use any type of drill for PVC, but make sure it’s sharp. Use a drill press and hold the whistle in a drill press vise (pad it with paper or something else soft).Drill lightly and slowly.
Makes sense. The dimensions of the Abell and the Schultz whistles do
appear to be close.
How about ABS plastic? Can one go through that or does it
shatter? I have some great old Susato whistles.
And, finally, what about alloy? How does one go through that?
I have some Chieftains that
could use a thumbhole. My impression is that would
take a nuclear detonation; but the six holes were
made in a less extreme way.
Jim - a small hole opposite an existing hole can act like half-holing the original, but it may not be as efficient, i.e. quite small and thereby not allowing too much air movement and giving a weaker note.
So for a Cnat thumb hole it is more efficient to locate the hole further down the tube, and making it bigger in the process.
When designing whistles (or flutes) the general rule is: locate a hole further up the tube and make it smaller,for the same note pitch. Locate it further down and make it bigger.
Pete Kosel’s Flutomat javascript flute designer can give you ideas on how much change may be required.
Yes, you can drill ABS. Again, sharp drill and light steady drill pressure. Also again, make sure you have the whistle firmly held in a vice. If you just hold it on the drill press table with your hand, it will try to run up the drill bit when you break through into the bore of the whistle.
The way I calculate the C nat Thumb Hole is to load my “whistle-diatonic” spreadsheet (I posted it on this forum some time ago). Enter the bore, wall thickness and tonehole diameters of the whistle to modifiy and then change the frequency of the top note to C nat. Then change try various tonehole diameters until it calculates a C nat in a comfy position of use and then drill it in the whistle.
I’ve searched the forum for a link to your spreadsheet and I think I’ve found it, but the links were unusable - would you be so kind and re-post it? I’ve found another of your tools regarding panpipes and was able to download that, but obviously, it’s not of much help in this case
Great thread! I’ve always wanted to try a whistle with a ‘C’ thumbhole. Now I know enough about it to experiment with one of my less cherished whistles. Thanks!
When I got the Burke narrow bore aluminum with a thumb hole from Doc,
I found the thumbhole awkward and taped it over. Now I really need
to use it so my finger will rest. I found that the awkwardness
passed quickly. The thumbhole is very natural and it comes online
for real in about a week, it seems. Just practice some scales
and go slow over passages where it seems awkward.
One nice thing about it (was mentioned earlier in this thread, I think)
is that the thumbhole enables you to slide the C natural.
Also you can make the C natural moan by raising the thumb a bit.
So there are new expressive options.
Also if you play G and lift the thumb, you get a B, not as strong
as the regular B but strong enough to work in quick tunes. So there
is an alternative and fast fingering for G, B, D, say, and back down.
Finally you can use the thumb hole to cut and roll on notes in the vicinity.
These work well enough but so far seem a bit less pronounced than
standard methods.
Dave C is putting a thumbhole on a keyless flute he made for me
a longish while ago. I’m eager to see what happens there. Possibly this
may actually work better than a C natural key–hopefully easy to use
and, on flute anyway, sometimes a helpful alternative to cross-fingering.
25 bucks sure beats 200 and a new flute body.
You can plug in the “C-nat” frequency as the second from the top and keep the last hole as a vent hole. It dosen’t matter much where the hole is placed around the circumference of the bore, only the distance from the hole center to the bore end. If you type in the measurements of all the toneholes sizes in your whistle and save the second size from the top blank for “C-nat”, the calculator will tell you precisely where to place the “C-nat” tonehole.
note: Most hardware stores have $3 dollar “plastic vernier calipers” to measure your whistle toneholes in tenths,hundredths and thousandths of an inch as well as metric scale measurements.
After drilling the small pilot hole and then incrementally increasing the drill size, has anyone tried using a Dremel tool for the final “drill”. One would think some of the various Dremel bits would eliminate oblong drill holes, snagging, tearing, and so on associated with using a standard drill bit.
Does plugging the whistle’s specs into a calculation form (algorithm) actually yield the “general rule” result (i.e. is it close enough that it doesn’t make any difference). I will check it out myself if I can pick up a cheap vernier caliper, but I though someone may have already went this route.
Tommy’s “general formula” does not take into account the size of the L2 hole and therefore is not accurate. For instance if L1, L2 and thumb hole LT are all the same size, the thumb hole needs to lie very close to L2. The bigger L2 is, the higher LT needs to be positioned. The “half way” rule is just a rough guide for a comfortable position, but you need to determine the hole diameter either by precise calculation or by increasing drill sizes slowly and checking the tuning.
You can useTWJCalc to position any number of holes on the whistle. You need to create a new ‘Scale Pattern’, say 2,2,1,2,2,1,1 in a file and load it into TWJCalc.
You can only do this on the downloaded version as it requires access to your file system, and that is deliberately difficult from a Java Applet.
I can give more detailed instructions to any who are interested.
The great thing about a Dremel is that it removes material very quickly. The bad thing about a Dremel is that it removes material very quickly. If you don’t have a drill press or milling machine you could use a Dremel. And Dremel do provide drill bits as well as milling cutters, rasps/files, grinding bits, etc. I have used one for hole finishing on occasion. I’d shudder at using one hand-held to drill a hole in most any tube unless it was clamped in a stand. The advantage to the Drill/Mill is that bits are available in a wide range of sizes and the machinery assures on-center drill positioning even if you start small and then drill the hole out to size. What Tommy describes is pretty much gospel on drilling brass tubes. Standard drill bits can be modified to reduce the grabbing he illustrates.
I like Han’s thinking too. As for the calculators you might want to see how accurately the calculator describes your whistle before you use it to calculate another hole. The calculations are usually pretty accurate for placement of holes relative to each other. So I’d rather position my thumb hole by to calculating it’s distance relative to the existing TH1 and TH2 holes as opposed to a distance form either the ramp edge or bottom of the tube.
